


Nature's Dark Gift

by bluesamutra



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode: s07e15 En Ami, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-15 13:09:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29808897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluesamutra/pseuds/bluesamutra
Summary: Daylight is coming and the shadows are gone
Relationships: Fox Mulder & Dana Scully, Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Kudos: 53





	Nature's Dark Gift

* * *

It's past two a.m. when the Gunmen finally leave, eyes darting like startled minnows as they hustle out of the crossfire. The silence in their wake is thick with words gone unsaid. Even the fish in the tank stay hidden, silent and uneasy behind a shroud of plastic foliage.

When Scully leans forward to rest her elbows on her knees, the creak of the sofa seems abnormally loud and Mulder shoves papers around his desk to avoid looking at her. She takes a breath and he can tell she's building up to offer another platitude and if she does he's in very real danger of hitting something. "It's late," he mutters instead, keen to preserve his plasterwork and get her out of his apartment before he says something he'll regret.

"Mulder," she says, beseeching in her hoarse, rundown voice and he refuses to give her his eyes.

"Go home Scully."

"No."

Even with the shock of her ditch still plucking at his psyche it's inconceivable to him that she would actually refuse. He has to stop his traitorous body from turning to gawp at her. "Not now," she whispers to his back. "If I leave now I'm afraid you'll shut me out for good."

The thought that hopping into bed with her four months ago might've exposed him to pains untold had crossed his mind in the past few hours, but he isn't about to admit it now. The truth of it was she had been an emotional millstone around his neck for years. Having biblical knowledge of the sweet spot behind her left knee or the perfect parabola of her hip doesn't count for jack shit in the topography of his many and varied liabilities. Whether it was Before Fucking or After Fucking - Fox Mulder was simply fucked when it came to Dana Scully.

"I can't talk to you right now," he spits, meaning that he can't look at her either. If he looks at her, he'll forgive her and then where will they be. This partnership won't work if both of them can't be trusted.

"Damnit Mulder," she says, "I didn't do anything you wouldn't have done. Anything you haven't done."

He wants to deny it, tell her he would never gamble everything on a hunch; but they both know that's not true. There is very little he wouldn't risk getting to the truth. And the affront, the rub, is that he hadn't realized she would too.

When he finally turns round, her tired eyes are dark and fluid with regret and she doesn't look very argumentative at all. Her shoulders bow under the weight of her guilt and that makes him feel even worse. Because for all the times it was him in the lead, he'd never truly regretted the consequences for those around him.

"I did what I thought was right, Mulder. And in the same circumstances, I'd probably do it again." Her chin drops a little, "But I never intended to hurt you."

If they were Regular People, the kind who didn't hare off at a moment's notice to try to bust open a global conspiracy, he'd probably tell her he loved her. But they aren't Regular People and they don't say things like that to each other.

"He could've killed you, Scully." He could've raped you, and you wouldn't even remember it, he does not add.

"Yes," she agrees softly, and in that moment he sees how much the last couple of days have taken out of her. The adrenaline, which had carried her home from Pennsylvania, had waned over the course of the evening, deserting her completely when she'd phoned her mother, cowed and remorseful in the face of Margaret Scully's panicked wrath. Her throat bobs on a swallow and she rubs her thumbs over the tips of her fingers, and he knows that what she really wants is for him to hold her. 

But he doesn't.

He isn't that guy and they haven't reached the stage where comfort can either be requested or given.

"Go take a shower," he suggests instead, because he really just wants to stop talking. The expression that flits over her face is hurt and surprised and he closes his eyes in frustration, as much with himself as with her. "I just mean..." he sighs, cocking his head at her, repentant for the insult he hadn't intended. "Let's just go to bed?"

He can't quite tell if she understands him, but she nods all the same and leaves him standing in his dingy living room. The smell of stale kung-po and his own hypocrisy is cloying, and he wishes he could hit his wall after all.

**

She takes a long time in the shower, emerging when he is nearly asleep in a plume of limey steam, his Yankees road jersey falling almost to her knees. Rain chaps the windowpane chopsticks style and egg-yolk yellow light from the street below refracts through the slickened glass and speckles Scully's face like a giraffe. She looks eighteen and scared, damp red hair finger-scraped away from her face and her nose covered in freckles.

"Are you waiting for an invitation?" he says, not sounding as mean as he intended, and she slips between the sheets beside him. They lie beside one another for so long, listening to each other breath, straining alveromancy, that it surprises them both when he speaks.

"When I got your message, and I called your mother," he confides, "I called her because I didn't want you to have deal with some family emergency on your own. Because things are different now."

Scully makes a muffled humming noise, turning her face into his shoulder. It feels like she whispers "I'm sorry" against his neck but he can't hear her over the pitter-pat of rain.

"And I could hear the panic in her voice before I'd even finished talking. Because there was no emergency, and here I was phoning her up out of the blue to tell her you were missing again."

"Mulder, I'm sorry," she says again, taking his face in both her hands and pulling until he turns to look at her. "I'm sorry."

In the darkness, her eyes are moist hematite and he leans his aching head into her fingertips. "Why does it have to be so hard?" The sigh of his breath stirs the fine hairs by her ear.

"I don't know."

He eskimos her nose, nudging until she shifts and he can fit his lips against hers. Her mouth is soft and pliant, and when he slides his hand over the slick rayon covering her hip and tugs her against him she sighs, minty breath puffing into his mouth. He had never imagined, in the years before they shared a bed, the joy he would find in her body, that sex with Scully could actually be fun. For long minutes, they trade chaste, close-lipped kisses, sweet and hopeful, fingers skirting along seams and under hems, dipping past elastic barriers and skimming over pebbled flesh. The buzz of anxiety in his head begins to subside.

"Mulder?"

He leans back to look down at her; she looks twitchy and anxious and the pleasant hum in his groin fades. Hesitantly, she reaches between them for his hand, dovetailing their fingers. "Will you just hold me?"

Mulder blinks, switching gears, nodding as his pulse slows and he shifts to the side, pulling Scully's weight against his chest. She's stiff and corpse-like and he wonders where the hell he went wrong because a second ago it seemed like they were about to fuck it all better.

"What did I do?" he asks, surprising himself for a second time with unforeseen candor.

"Nothing."

Obviously. He sighs his frustration into the murky air and she toys with the shiny scar on his shoulder.

"I don't want sex to be about forgetting things," she says cautiously, as if she ever does anything incautious. His fingers play the piano keys of her spine and he thinks that the funny thing is, for him, sex has pretty much always been about forgetting things.

"You know I love you, don't you?" he asks, when she has finally relaxed against him and so much time has passed that the rain has stopped and the there is orange in the sky.

She chuffs against him, her cheek stuck to his chest and her toes barely past his knees. "I'm still not having sex with you tonight."

He smiles at no one in particular and closes his eyes.


End file.
